Container and method and means for handling cargo by such containers



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CONTAINER AND METHOD AND MEANS FOR HANDLING CARGO BY SUCH CONTAINERS Filed Oct. 26, 1927- 18 Sheets-Sheet l8 Mms/MLL 040s @ifHM Gu Patented Mar. .7 1933 UNITED STATES PATENT! OFFICE MARSHALL OLDS, 0F MO'll'NTAINSIDE, NEW JERSEY CONTAINER AND METHOD AND MEANS FOR HANDLING CARGO BY SUCH CONTAINERS Application filed October 26,1927. Serial No. 28.822.

Miscellaneous cargo, which consists of barrels, bales, boxes, crates and similar packages of merchandise and which comprises a large proportion of the worlds total commercial traffic, is in eneral under present conditions the most di icult of all classes of trafiic to handle and the most expensive to transport.

My invention consists of an improved method of transporting miscellaneous cargo and handling it in transport through the use of certain new and improved devices and combinations of devices, whereby such cargo can be shipped from any given locality-to any other locality in the same or any other country which can be reached by motortruck,railroad or water-carrier, or any combination of such carriers, without the need of rehandling or repacking the individual packages of such cargo.

Existing equipment for the transportation of merchandise of all kinds and for its handling intransport represents a considerable proportion of the total-wealth of civilized nations. Moreover, the distributionof such equipment and the system under which it is operated are governed by vital social and economic facts, and the continuous fulland eflicient operation of such equipment is fundamental to our social and economic welfare.

invention, therefore, which applies broadly to the field of transportation must, in order to be practical and useful, take into consideration these inherent facts and the facts which flow from them.

fMy invention has the practical advantages 0 Providing a means of using eflicieiitly v each of various principal types of carriers; -2. Providing'a means of making use of existing equipment including freight handling facilities as well as carriers; r

3. Doing this without rendering such equipment unfit for handling other classes of freighter freightby present methods;

4. Coordinating with existing methods of 7 handling freight;

5. Meeting both the conditions under which freight must be handled in congested traflic centers and those which are inherent in its handling 1n isolated places; and a 6. Providing such means so that they will not only operate practically under existing conditions but are susceptible of coordination with the-trend of development and improvement of our transportation system as a whole. 7

My invention aims broadly to make it possible to transfermiscellaneous freight from any original point of, shipment to any desired destlnatlon without the need of repacking or otherwise rehandling .the individual packages of merchandise, thus saving time, labor, breakage and other los or expense. Various other features of the/invention will be apparent as the description proceeds and the same will be defined with particularity in the appended claims.

My standard cargo containers may be packed with merchandise at the factory where such merchandise is manufactured.

Such container may then either be lifted or rolled on, ball casters over my bridge-tracks (hereinafter described) onto a motor truck onto which it is locked and which carries it to the railroad freight receiving station. If this railroad freight receiving station handles enough freight to warrant such cost, it will be equipped with cranes for rapidly lifting the container from the motor truck, handling it within the freight receivingst-ation and loading it ontothe railroad flat car. If,

however, this station handles little freight so that expensive equipment would not be warranted, the container may be rolled over bridge-tracks from the truck to the station platform, rolled on a hard floor or over inexpensive countersunk wU beam tracks, about the station as desired, and over bridgetracks onto the railroad flat car to which it may be looked as hereinafter described. I may also provide a suitable Windlass or its equivalent by means of which-the containers can thus be rolled onto or ofi trucks, freight caps orQ about freight sheds.

At congested freight centers or in the hold of a ship, it will be neeessary,'in order to conserve space, to able to store and move.

one tier of containers on top .of another. This may be doll; by overhgad zrl'gne or trolleysystemor asystem'o tra upon thetop'ofeachcontainerwhichareoonnected to similar tracks on adjacent containers by bridge-tracks over which superimposed containers may travel or dwell on their ballcasters. I prefer to secure such ball-casters on the bottom of the container in such relationship that they can be readily moved longitudinally or latitudinally over tracks of the same gauge.

I prefer to make the containers of a substantially uniform standard or'interchangeable size so that three of them will fit conveniently on a standard American railroad flat car, and two on an average European railroad flat car, and one on a motor truck. Thus, my container constitutes a standard interchangeable attachable and detachable motor truck body; a standard interchangeable attachable and detachable section of a railroad freight car body and a standard interchangeable attachable and detachable unit compartment in a ship.

When loaded onto a railroad flat car, the container may be carried to its point of railroad destination, where it may be lifted or rolled onto a motor truck for final delivery, or to a railroad transfer point where it may be lifted or rolled onto the flat car of another railroad and this process may be repeated as many times as necessary without the need of handling or disturbing the contents of the container. Thus, one-third carload lots may be handled with all the advantage of full carload shipments and in addition the cars may be loaded and unloaded in a few minutes so that the car may return at once to other service instead of held idle often for days, asat present. L

The handling of way-freight is a serious problem and expense in modern railroading; more and more local freight is being handled by motor-trucks and many railroads are considering the possibility of handling their way-freight by a combination of railroad andmotor truck service. My container may be loaded with freight for any given geographical section, carried by railroad to a local center of distribution transferred to a motor truck without rehandling or other delay and distributed by the motor truck wherever desired.

In sending freight to foreign countries or elsewhere by water-carriers, my containers rolled on its ball-casters, into its desired place in ranks and files with other containers, Preferably, the floor of the hold will be fitted with countersunk U-bar tracks so arranged that the containers can be quickly and directly rolled over them into compact juxtaposition or the over-head rails will be so arranged as to accomplish the same end. When the given section of the ship is thus filled with one tier of containers a second tier may be superimposed upon these. This may be done 'by an overhead carrier system as described or the tracks on the top of each container of the lower tier may be connected by bridgetracks or swivel tracks (as described in detail later) to the tracks on each adjacent container and superimposed containers rolled into place over them. Containers may be similarly loaded on the various in-between decks but only one tier high.

As the width of a vessel varies a given number of containers will not always fill the full space from side to side. Thus, in certain parts of the ship aisles of varying width, but less than the width of a container, will be left probably at the center. These, of course, may be filled with cargo or left as alley ways. In either event they will be bridged by bridge-tracks of the proper length over which superimposed containers may be rolled.

Because of the curvature of the ships side, rows or files of containers will rarely set flush against it. Each such container, however, may be braced against the ships sides by bulkheads or bridge tracks. lhus, the whole mass of containers filling substantially the whole of any given section of the ship, arranged in rows and files and tiers in close juxtaposition, and thus supporting each other, further braced in relation to each other by the bridge-tracks between the various containers and the whole body similarly braced on all sides against the ships sides and bulkheads forms a unit which cannot shift, either .in part or whole, with the motion of the ship at sea. Moreover, each such container may be further locked, as will be describedlater, to the floor or to the container below.

Such a system of loading cargo into vessels in great standard units, of perhaps ten tons each, and rapidly moving and locking each such unit into place so that it cannot shift will obviously mean a great saving of time and labor over the present methods of loading cargo into vessels and stowing it piece by piece. I

When the port of destination is reached any number or all of such containers may be rapidly unloaded by reversing the process of loading. v Each may then be sent by railroad as already described to its city of destination and by motor truck to final destination.

Thus, any such container can, and if its contents are examined by consular agent and the consular seal placed upon its lock at original point of shipment, may be' sent from any shipping point in any country to any shipping point in any other country without its contents being disturbed. 

